Speedway Motorsports Chairman Bruton Smith said Wednesday night that he was honored to be nominated for the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

"It is a great honor to be nominated as a candidate for the NASCAR Hall of Fame," Smith said in a statement. "Bill France Jr. once asked me to help him build NASCAR and I have literally been building monuments to the sport for my entire lifetime. Millions of people have attended NASCAR events at our speedways over the years and we've tried to be creative and innovative in an effort to help push the sport to a higher level."

But Smith's feelings about being in the hall of fame apparently represent a change of heart.

In a recent interview with NASCAR Illustrated, Smith said he didn’t care whether he is voted into the hall or not.

Smith and 1999 NASCAR Cup champion Dale Jarrett were among five people added to the list of 20 nominees for the 2014 class of the hall of fame. A 54-member panel will decide the five inductees for 2014 on May 22.

In this excerpt from the May cover story in NASCAR Illustrated, Smith talks about his legacy and what he still wants to accomplish as the chairman of Speedway Motorsports Inc., which owns eight tracks that host NASCAR Sprint Cup races. The full interview will be available in the May issue, which hits newsstands the week of April 22. To subscribe, go to store.scenedaily.com or call 1-800-883-7323.

NASCAR Illustrated: Many people have said it’s past time for you to be in the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Does that mean something to you?

Smith: It really does not. I think that had it happened some time ago, it would have meant something, but today it means nothing. Now, I don’t know why but it just doesn’t mean anything to me. It doesn’t mean one thing. If I got a phone call this afternoon, “Oh, we’re gonna put you in there,” I don’t give a [expletive] whether you do or not.

NI: Is there something you desire now at 86?

Smith: Oh, yeah. I mean, I guess, to me, it’s like a game. Eventually, if you have success, in your mind it’s measured by what you’re doing today and what you’re accomplishing. I enjoy progress. I weigh progress maybe differently than some people. It’s not that you have to desire more. It’s just that part of the contest is to win and keep winning, winning, winning. If you’re winning, then there’s a purse there for you all the time, so that’s where we’re going after the prize money. So that is success.

NI: You’re NASCAR CEO Brian France for a day. What other changes do you make to NASCAR to improve it?

Smith: I would do a couple of major things. I would cut the costs of the sport. Here again, like the speedways, you’ve seen a lot of stuff lately here in our hometown about the [Carolina] Panthers wanting the money from the city and the state. … We do what we do with private capital. So that is vitally important, I think. You make your own way. … Because these speedways, we wake up every morning and these speedways eat every day, they eat. I have invested right now in the speedways, we’re about $4 billion invested, so that’s a lot of money.

NI: What other changes specifically?

Smith: The next thing I’d do without a doubt is, I’d slow the cars down at least 20 mph. If you’ll check history going way back 70 years ago, let’s go back to the open-wheel when Indianapolis was the leader, everything that they did, every time they reduced the speed, they made progress. So backing up, you went forward so to speak. That’s what we need to do. We need to reduce the speed of these cars. They’re too doggone fast.

I looked at them side by side in Vegas, and I was amazed, truly amazed at the speed. I would say on the straightaways they were hitting like 200-plus mph. We’ve already had them out here running 208. That’s too fast. We’d like to see them be able to run side by side, but how are you gonna run side by side? … You don’t want to do that side-by-side business at 200 mph.

NI: What’s the biggest misconception about you in how you’ve been portrayed by the media at times over your career?

Smith: I don’t read enough of my press clippings; I don’t pay attention to that. I advocate that to my GMs. I don’t want them to get caught up in reading their press clippings. So, I ignore all of that if it’s a negative. I’m not into negatives.

NI: One thing in your life that you haven’t done that you’d really like to do still?

Smith: I’m trying to think of what her name is [laughs]. I do have some regrets about not being able to drive racecars longer. I only did it about a year and a half. I had, well to me, it was quite a bit of success. I’d liked to have had more and liked to have driven longer. I’d like to race against Dale Earnhardt. I would have moved his ass out of the way. I told him, I used to bug him, I said, “Damn, I wish I could come back. I would wear that No. 3 off your door, man.”